Managing groups in Azure Active Directory

In this article

One of the features of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) user management is the ability to create groups of users. You use a group to perform management tasks such as assigning licenses or permissions to a number of users at once. You can also use groups to assign access permission to

Resources such as objects in the directory

Resources external to the directory such as SaaS applications, Azure services, SharePoint sites, or on-premises resources

In addition, a resource owner can also assign access to a resource to an Azure AD group owned by someone else. This assignment grants the members of that group access to the resource. Then, the owner of the group manages membership in the group. Effectively, the resource owner delegates to the owner of the group the permission to assign users to their resource.

How do I create a group?

Depending on the services to which your organization has subscribed, you can create a group using one of the following:

the Azure classic portal

the Office 365 account portal

the Windows Intune account portal

We'll describe tasks as performed in the Azure classic portal. For more information about using non-Azure portals to manage your Azure AD directory, see Administering your Azure AD directory.

In the Azure classic portal, select Active Directory, and then select the name of the directory for your organization.

Select the Groups tab.

Select Add Group.

In the Add Group window, specify the name and the description of a group.

How do I add or remove individual users in a security group?

To add an individual user to a group

In the Azure classic portal, select Active Directory, and then select the name of the directory for your organization.

Select the Groups tab.

Open the group to which you want to add members. Open the Members tab of the selected group if it not already displaying.

Select Add Members.

On the Add Members page, select the name of the user or a group that you want to add as a member of this group. Make sure that this name is added to the Selected pane.

To remove an individual user from a group

In the Azure classic portal, select Active Directory, and then select the name of the directory for your organization.

Select the Groups tab.

Open the group from which you want to remove members.

Select the Members tab, select the name of the member that you want to remove from this group, and then click Remove.

Confirm at the prompt that you want to remove this member from the group.

How can I manage the membership of a group dynamically?

In Azure AD, you can very easily set up a simple rule to determine which users are to be members of the group. A simple rule is one that makes only a single comparison. For example, if a group is assigned to a SaaS application, you can set up a rule to add users who have a job title of "Sales Rep." This rule then grants access to this SaaS application to all users with that job title in your directory.

When any attributes of a user change, the system evaluates all dynamic group rules in a directory to see if the attribute change of the user would trigger any group adds or removes. If a user satisfies a rule on a group, they are added as a member to that group. If they no longer satisfy the rule of a group they are a member of, they are removed as a members from that group.

Note

You can set up a rule for dynamic membership on security groups or Office 365 groups. Nested group memberships aren't currently supported for group-based assignment to applications.

Dynamic memberships for groups require an Azure AD Premium license to be assigned to

The administrator who manages the rule on a group

All members of the group

To enable dynamic membership for a group

In the Azure classic portal, select Active Directory, and then select the name of the directory for your organization.

Select the Groups tab, and open the group you want to edit.

Select the Configure tab, and then set Enable Dynamic Memberships to Yes.

Set up a simple single rule for the group to control how dynamic membership for this group functions. Make sure the Add users where option is selected, and then select a user property from the list (for example, department, jobTitle, etc.),